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Swan Knight
As the nineteenth century draws toward its close, King Ludwig II of Bavaria binge-watches television to escape his reality, side-lined by his own advisers. His one wish is to meet Wagner, the mysterious composer pumping out new music and scores of remixes every day.
He sets out, alone and in disguise, to find Wagner in the maze-like subterranean city that sprawls deep beneath Munich.
Meanwhile, Karl, a rookie musician hired by Wagner in the underground world, is shocked to be chosen as the lead singer for the Swan Knight TV music drama.
But even in the depths of the earth, the insidious shadow of political intrigue lurks. Who is Wagner, the man behind the myth? And what ultimate destiny awaits Ludwig and Karl?
Novella first published in Japanese in SF Magazine by Hayakawa Publishing, Tokyo, 2005. Later published in author's 2013 collection ヴェネツィアの恋人 (Lovers of Venice).
He sets out, alone and in disguise, to find Wagner in the maze-like subterranean city that sprawls deep beneath Munich.
Meanwhile, Karl, a rookie musician hired by Wagner in the underground world, is shocked to be chosen as the lead singer for the Swan Knight TV music drama.
But even in the depths of the earth, the insidious shadow of political intrigue lurks. Who is Wagner, the man behind the myth? And what ultimate destiny awaits Ludwig and Karl?
Novella first published in Japanese in SF Magazine by Hayakawa Publishing, Tokyo, 2005. Later published in author's 2013 collection ヴェネツィアの恋人 (Lovers of Venice).
124 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 26, 2024
"...Swan Knight itself is a case of a fiction that is, perhaps, more compelling than truth. It is more than just alternative history and it does more than simply borrow from the life of an obscure king who lived 9,000 km away from the author and who died almost 150 years ago. The historical details in Swan Knight are really real—so well researched and incorporated into the story that a reader may find new historical “Easter eggs” on a second or even a third pass at the novel. The novel feels real, too. Even in adapting the historical tale, adding ahistorical technology, and projecting personalities on historical figures, the result aligns so closely with real historical fact it’s easy to lose track of where history ends and Takano’s imaginative additions begin."
Full review at Asian Review of Books:
https://tinyurl.com/ARBSwanKnight
Full review at Asian Review of Books:
https://tinyurl.com/ARBSwanKnight
July 15, 2024
It was strange , wacky, and quite good.
February 15, 2025
This was such a strange little book. I'm particularly amused by the fact that the author (or perhaps her late husband) was so captivated by the figures of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria and his patronage of German composer Richard Wagner that she felt compelled to write a fantastical alternate history for them lol.
Also I'm obsessed with this cover, so below is a link to the artist's instagram:
Kashima
Also I'm obsessed with this cover, so below is a link to the artist's instagram:
Kashima
February 16, 2025
An absurd book that is not disturbing, though. The King of Bavaria Ludwig II (the one from Neuschweinstein Castle to be clear) watching TV until he gets dizzy. An unobtainable Wagner whom even Parsifal goes in search of and over all, Karl, Swann King and factotum of the unfindable theater.
Un libro assurdo che peró non disturba. Il re di Baviera Ludovico II (quello del castello di Neuschweinstein per capirsi) che guarda la tv fino a stordirsi. Un Wagner introvabile di cui anche Parsifal va alla ricerca e su tutti, Karl, Swann King e factotum dell teatro introvabile.
Un libro assurdo che peró non disturba. Il re di Baviera Ludovico II (quello del castello di Neuschweinstein per capirsi) che guarda la tv fino a stordirsi. Un Wagner introvabile di cui anche Parsifal va alla ricerca e su tutti, Karl, Swann King e factotum dell teatro introvabile.
January 11, 2025
A short fantasy novel (a rare combination) that is interesting though doesn't clinch its climax enough to carry it home. The post-modernist "lack of center" and "reality is relative" was both unwelcome and shrugable, as most post-modernist wanderings on the nature of reality are. Still, an interesting book and a quick read.
January 1, 2025
why not have the swan king a tv to binge-watch wagner
June 26, 2024
We find ourselves in Bavaria in an alternative version of the 1880s. Mad King Ludwig is on the throne, and he is just as enraptured by the music of Wagner as he was in our reality. Where this world diverges from our own is that the second industrial revolution has already occurred and has produced the television. To be sure, the sets are valve-operated cathode ray designs, and the images are in snowy black and white, but they exert a kind of hypnotic hold on the viewing public, and on Ludwig II in particular.
Television has acquired this power because it is used to broadcast the music-dramas of Wagner. These are produced in the Festspielhaus: the opera house that was funded by Ludwig and built in Bayreuth to showcase Wagner’s work, transfigured into the vast labyrinth of underground studios where most of the action of the novel takes place.
Here, Wagner’s operas are constantly in production – or rather, they are transformed from grand to soap opera, since this precocious culture has also developed post-modernism before its time, and pastiche and irony have become the dominant style. The catch is that the maestro himself is entirely absent – he has become more of a myth than a man, yet still produces an impossibly prolific outpouring of cut up, switched round and spun off versions of his own earlier works.
No doubt suspicious readers will smell an allegory in this set up – but which do you prefer? Plato’s Cave, Freud’s Id, or perhaps our contemporary concern with the fall of the grand narratives of the Enlightenment, Marxism and Modernism, to be replaced by politically convenient accounts that fail to connect with any underlying reality? In any case, the novel presents us with a severe case of cultural dementia, in which – as it explains in a memorable passage – anything is possible and nothing makes sense.
‘Pleasurable fantasies throbbed from the warm glass tube. He stared at the screen, in the same way young girls would watch a fake war documentary before heading off to ply their sleazy trade. As disabled soldiers watched a kids’ show. As an elderly couple were bombarded with ads for high fashion accessories. As mama-sans peered at a still shot of a twisted corpse in advanced decay. As a lonely lighthouse keeper saw the smile of a foreign emperor. As a misanthropic child watched a formal ball held years ago. As a coachman with haemorrhoids saw a new work by Wagner. As an aristocrat, who secretly had to work to make ends meet, lusted over a girl’s thighs in tight close-up. As ageing rent boys watched a pirated show on the genius of Bismarck.’
As might be expected, given the Wagnerian setting, the plot takes the form of intertwining quests. Equally as expected, these centre around the search for some kind of stable identity. The heroes are a man who believes himself to be Ludwig II; Karl, a minor arranger inexplicably chosen by Wagner to play Lohengrin, the titular Swan Knight; a teenage girl who might really be – but how could she be? – the grail knight Parsifal. There are also a couple of major minor characters: the composer Gottfried, and Hans, a bit-player-cum-bounty-hunter who clearly knows more than he is letting on.
Ludwig is consumed by the desire to meet Wagner in the flesh, since this will free him from the Tristan-like death-delirium in which he spends his days, perpetually uncertain how he has come to be where he is, lost in images that evoke romantic yearnings that can never achieve fulfilment. If he can only find Wagner, he will become his partner in art and complete, or possibly make a final start on, his life’s work.
Meanwhile, Karl is consumed by the desire to establish his own identity as the Swan Knight – his voice really isn’t that good, and he’s not terribly popular with the viewers – and this becomes bound up with the need to find out who King Ludwig really is. As for Parsifal’s grail quest, how can this be possible, given the complete victory of irony over integrity that the novel dramatizes?
What is at stake in all of this is what, exactly, constitutes reality – a theme that is addressed at the climax of the novel, which takes the form of a series of philosophical claims and counter-claims. Here the writer, Fumio Takano, has set herself the task of requiting her characters’ desires in spite of their various metaphysical predicaments. Her success in doing this is in a satisfying way is impressive, even working in a splendid twist that points the way to surviving in the epistemological nightmare that is the Festspielhaus – or in our own unravelling culture, come to that.
Finally, a word of appreciation for the translator, Sharni Wilson, who has turned the Japanese original into smooth and supple English. A narrative that must constantly balance competing claims of what is and isn’t real might test the patience of a reader (for example, me) who just wants to know what’s going on. This rendering has an almost magical ability to give full value to the text’s uncertainties while propelling the story forward regardless. A considerable achievement.
Television has acquired this power because it is used to broadcast the music-dramas of Wagner. These are produced in the Festspielhaus: the opera house that was funded by Ludwig and built in Bayreuth to showcase Wagner’s work, transfigured into the vast labyrinth of underground studios where most of the action of the novel takes place.
Here, Wagner’s operas are constantly in production – or rather, they are transformed from grand to soap opera, since this precocious culture has also developed post-modernism before its time, and pastiche and irony have become the dominant style. The catch is that the maestro himself is entirely absent – he has become more of a myth than a man, yet still produces an impossibly prolific outpouring of cut up, switched round and spun off versions of his own earlier works.
No doubt suspicious readers will smell an allegory in this set up – but which do you prefer? Plato’s Cave, Freud’s Id, or perhaps our contemporary concern with the fall of the grand narratives of the Enlightenment, Marxism and Modernism, to be replaced by politically convenient accounts that fail to connect with any underlying reality? In any case, the novel presents us with a severe case of cultural dementia, in which – as it explains in a memorable passage – anything is possible and nothing makes sense.
‘Pleasurable fantasies throbbed from the warm glass tube. He stared at the screen, in the same way young girls would watch a fake war documentary before heading off to ply their sleazy trade. As disabled soldiers watched a kids’ show. As an elderly couple were bombarded with ads for high fashion accessories. As mama-sans peered at a still shot of a twisted corpse in advanced decay. As a lonely lighthouse keeper saw the smile of a foreign emperor. As a misanthropic child watched a formal ball held years ago. As a coachman with haemorrhoids saw a new work by Wagner. As an aristocrat, who secretly had to work to make ends meet, lusted over a girl’s thighs in tight close-up. As ageing rent boys watched a pirated show on the genius of Bismarck.’
As might be expected, given the Wagnerian setting, the plot takes the form of intertwining quests. Equally as expected, these centre around the search for some kind of stable identity. The heroes are a man who believes himself to be Ludwig II; Karl, a minor arranger inexplicably chosen by Wagner to play Lohengrin, the titular Swan Knight; a teenage girl who might really be – but how could she be? – the grail knight Parsifal. There are also a couple of major minor characters: the composer Gottfried, and Hans, a bit-player-cum-bounty-hunter who clearly knows more than he is letting on.
Ludwig is consumed by the desire to meet Wagner in the flesh, since this will free him from the Tristan-like death-delirium in which he spends his days, perpetually uncertain how he has come to be where he is, lost in images that evoke romantic yearnings that can never achieve fulfilment. If he can only find Wagner, he will become his partner in art and complete, or possibly make a final start on, his life’s work.
Meanwhile, Karl is consumed by the desire to establish his own identity as the Swan Knight – his voice really isn’t that good, and he’s not terribly popular with the viewers – and this becomes bound up with the need to find out who King Ludwig really is. As for Parsifal’s grail quest, how can this be possible, given the complete victory of irony over integrity that the novel dramatizes?
What is at stake in all of this is what, exactly, constitutes reality – a theme that is addressed at the climax of the novel, which takes the form of a series of philosophical claims and counter-claims. Here the writer, Fumio Takano, has set herself the task of requiting her characters’ desires in spite of their various metaphysical predicaments. Her success in doing this is in a satisfying way is impressive, even working in a splendid twist that points the way to surviving in the epistemological nightmare that is the Festspielhaus – or in our own unravelling culture, come to that.
Finally, a word of appreciation for the translator, Sharni Wilson, who has turned the Japanese original into smooth and supple English. A narrative that must constantly balance competing claims of what is and isn’t real might test the patience of a reader (for example, me) who just wants to know what’s going on. This rendering has an almost magical ability to give full value to the text’s uncertainties while propelling the story forward regardless. A considerable achievement.
May 27, 2025
Takie może 3,5 gwiazdki, ale zaokrąglam w górę, bo przez większą część przednio się bawiłam, dałam się wciągnąć w wykreowany przez Autorkę futurystyczno-historyczny świat i byłam szczerze ciekawa, do czego to wszystko zmierza.
August 6, 2024
Dreamy but it had lots of interesting details that place you firmly in the setting of the book. An enjoyable read.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews